Military

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has once again turned down an effort by Navy veterans to get compensation for possible exposure to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. In a document released Friday, the VA said it would continue to limit benefits related to Agent Orange exposure to only those veterans who set foot in Vietnam, where the herbicide was sprayed, and to those who were on boats in inland rivers.

Radcliff, Kentucky — A local man who survived the Tiger Death March as a POW in the Korean War died Sunday, January 24, 2010. Charles Frost Jr. often arrived at local veterans events in a 1942 Army Jeep. He also would wear his old uniform, which he will be buried in. He was 77.

You would think the nation’s military would move with lightning speed to patch cell phones vulnerable to hackers, particularly after recent disclosures that Chinese hackers harvested the personal information of 21.5 million U.S. government employees and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard broke into the Obama Administration’s social media accounts. You would be wrong.

The watchdog charged with overseeing U.S. spending in Afghanistan says the Pentagon is dodging his inquiries about an $800 million program that was supposed to energize the Afghan economy. John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, said the military is restricting access to some documents in violation of law and has claimed there are no Defense Department personnel who can answer questions about the Task Force for Business Stability Operations, or TFBSO, which operated for five years.

A Coast Guard MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter crew medevacs a man from motor vessel Houston Express off the North Carolina coast Thursday, April 4, 2015. The crew aboard Houston Express spotted the man on a disabled sailing vessel and took him aboard approximately 200 miles east of Cape Hatteras. U.S. Coast Guard video by Air Station Elizabeth City.

The Department of Defense released proposed rules late last week targeting the practices of a broad range of high-cost lenders and prohibiting them from charging service members interest rates over 36 percent. The new rules would overhaul the Military Lending Act, which, when enacted in 2007, narrowly defined potentially abusive loans. But as ProPublica and Marketplace reported last year, high-cost lenders easily circumvented the law by offering longer-term loans. The new rules would have a substantial impact.

"Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was repealed years ago. Gay people are generally accepted in the military. But one last major hurdle involves a more broad acceptance of the transgendered, as one vet's plight after her service has evidenced.

While we still haven't finished paying for the previous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — remember that pesky budget deficit the GOP keeps threatening to shut down the government over? — America appears to be marching into action again without a plan to pay for it. The country spent $1.5 trillion on Iraq 2.0 alone. You don't need an e-book meme to wonder how that money could've been better spent.

South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham says we need to bomb ISIS before they come to America and kill us all. He appeared on one of the talking-head news programs to practically beg the President to up the war efforts.

Thirteen years after the 9/11 attacks killed nearly 3,000 people and spun America into a renewed decade of war, President Obama reflects on the time that has passed and the future generation growing up in the shadow of the day that changed America forever.